The present invention relates generally to the field of medical imaging systems. Particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for a soft-copy reading mammography interpretation workstation.
Digital mammography images are very data-intensive. A standard 4-view study acquired on a digital system with a 50 μm detector can contain more than 140 MB of data. Even when displaying such mammographic images on two 5 mega-pixel monitors, the radiologist is really seeing only 7% of the information. One of the issues that radiologists face is that many of the tools that they use, such as interpretation workstations, are relatively primitive when it comes to dealing with such large amounts of data.
Screening mammography reading requires high throughput due to the large volume of screen mammograms and the low reimbursement rate. Historically, screening mammograms on film tend to performed by reading batches with the average interpretation time per case being around 1 minute including time for dictation. However the median film reading time may be as short as 15 seconds because the vast majority of screening cases are negative.
A number of studies have shown that radiologists take a significantly longer time for interpretation when reading digital mammography cases as compared to the time for screen-film mammography. Reasons for this increase in reading time include the poor performance of data transactions and inappropriate viewing workflows for mammography. These needs are not well-addressed in current picture archiving and communication system (PACS) workstations.